Computer Sciences Commons^™

Personalization By Program Slicing, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Personalization involves customizing information access to the end-user. As any new area of computer science research it lacks formal models to guide the design of systems. In this paper, we present a modeling methodology, based on generative programming, for personalizing interactions with hierarchical websites. The methodology entails modeling a user’s interaction with a site in a program and applying program slicing to personalize the interaction. While preserving interactivity, this approach does not require the designer to anticipate all possible user interactions a priori and provide interfaces for each. Moreover, it provides a theoretical, systematic, and implementation-neutral way to design systems …

Web Usability Guidelines For Air Force Knowledge Now Web Site, Gary A. Felax

Theses and Dissertations

The Department of Defense Net-Centric Data Strategies number one key attribute is to ensure data is visible, available, and usable when and where needed to accelerate decision-making. The Internet provides opportunities for quick and efficient disseminating of information to the public, distributing information throughout the Air Force, and accessing information from a variety of sources. In 2002, the Air Force CIO designated the Air Force Knowledge Now (AFKN) as the center of excellence for Knowledge Management. The site is a one-stop resource, providing access to a great depth and breadth of information. This study seeks to determine how usable and …

Accelerating Missile Threat Engagement Simulations Using Personal Computer Graphics Cards, Sean E. Jeffers

Theses and Dissertations

The 453rd Electronic Warfare Squadron supports on-going military operations by providing battlefield commanders with aircraft ingress and egress routes that minimize the risk of shoulder or ground-fired missile attacks on our aircraft. To determine these routes, the 453rd simulates engagements between ground-to-air missiles and allied aircraft to determine the probability of a successful attack. The simulations are computationally expensive, often requiring two-hours for a single 10-second missile engagement. Hundreds of simulations are needed to perform a complete risk assessment which includes evaluating the effectiveness of countermeasures such as flares, chaff, jammers, and missile warning systems. Thus, the need for faster …

Video Text Detection And Segmentation For Optical Character Recognition, Chong-Wah Ngo, Chi-Kwong Chan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we present approaches to detecting and segmenting text in videos. The proposed video-text-detection technique is capable of adaptively applying appropriate operators for video frames of different modalities by classifying the background complexities. Effective operators such as the repeated shifting operations are applied for the noise removal of images with high edge density. Meanwhile, a text-enhancement technique is used to highlight the text regions of low-contrast images. A coarse-to-fine projection technique is then employed to extract text lines from video frames. Experimental results indicate that the proposed text-detection approach is superior to the machine-learning-based (such as SVM and …

Video Summarization And Scene Detection By Graph Modeling, Chong-Wah Ngo, Yu-Fei Ma, Hong-Jiang Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we propose a unified approach for video summarization based on the analysis of video structures and video highlights. Two major components in our approach are scene modeling and highlight detection. Scene modeling is achieved by normalized cut algorithm and temporal graph analysis, while highlight detection is accomplished by motion attention modeling. In our proposed approach, a video is represented as a complete undirected graph and the normalized cut algorithm is carried out to globally and optimally partition the graph into video clusters. The resulting clusters form a directed temporal graph and a shortest path algorithm is proposed …

Why Are Those Computers Sitting Over There Gathering Dust, Bradford Ralph Austin

Theses Digitization Project

The purpose of this project was to create electronic books (E-books) for kindergartens to read during their center time. The E-books are intended for kindergarten teachers to use to help their students learn to read while utilizing the technology resources in their classroom. These E-books are teacher created so the cost is minimal and they can be copied and distributed to each student without worrying about copyright laws. Teachers can customize them to fit the current thematic unit they are teaching and once created, they can be used repeadedly without being damaged like paper books.

Too Quick? Log Analysis Of Quick Links From An Academic Library Website, Jimmy Ghaphery

VCU Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

Since the summer of 2001, Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries has offered a “Quick Links” menu in the top right-hand side of many of its pages. Transaction log files have been run in order to analyze the use of the Quick Links, and several changes have been made based on those logs. This article will discuss those findings and offer contextual ideas for the use of Quick Links in comparison to the rest of the library website.

Interfacing Agents With Natural Language, Jared Allen

Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal

Technology is leading us to a world where computers are everywhere. A new breed of machines capable of sensing and reacting to stimuli in the real world is under development. Unfortunately, these new, powerful devices can oftentimes be difficult for the average person to understand. It is imperative that an easy to use interface be implemented to usher in this new world. Natural language (speech) would be an ideal solution. However, it has proven implausible on a large scale. A Menu-Based Natural Language Interface (MBNLI) could retain the intuitiveness of speech, while eliminating the obstacles impeding implementation. This research paper …

A Generative Programming Approach To Interactive Information Retrieval: Insights And Experiences, Saverio Perugini, Naren Ramakrishnan

Computer Science Faculty Publications

We describe the application of generative programming to a problem in interactive information retrieval. The particular interactive information retrieval problem we study is the support for "out-of-turn interaction" with a website – how a user can communicate input to a website when the site is not soliciting such information on the current page, but will do so on a subsequent page. Our solution approach makes generous use of program transformations (partial evaluation, currying, and slicing) to delay the site’s current solicitation for input until after the user’s out-of-turn input is processed. We illustrate how studying out-of-turn interaction through a generative …

The Good, Bad And The Indifferent: Explorations In Recommender System Health, Benjamin J. Keller, Sun-Mi Kim, N. Srinivas Vemuri, Naren Ramakrishnan, Saverio Perugini

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Our work is based on the premise that analysis of the connections exploited by a recommender algorithm can provide insight into the algorithm that could be useful to predict its performance in a fielded system. We use the jumping connections model defined by Mirza et al. [6], which describes the recommendation process in terms of graphs. Here we discuss our work that has come out of trying to understand algorithm behavior in terms of these graphs. We start by describing a natural extension of the jumping connections model of Mirza et al., and then discuss observations that have come from …

Review Of Internet Invention: From Literacy To Electracy, By Gregory L. Ulmer, 2003, Alan Clinton

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

View Space Linking, Solid Node Compression And Binary Space Partitioning For Visibility Determination In 3d Walk-Throughs, Joel Anderson

Theses : Honours

Today's 3D games consumers are expecting more and more quality in their games. To enable high quality graphics at interactive rates, games programmers employ a technique known as hidden surface removal (HSR) or polygon culling. HSR is not just applicable to games; it may also be applied to any application that requires quality and interactive rates, including medical, military and building applications. One such commonly used technique for HSR is the binary space partition (BSP) tree, which is used for 3D ‘walk-throughs’, otherwise known as 3D static environments or first person shooters. Recent developments in 3D accelerated hardware technology do …

Affective Design In Technical Communication, Michael Alan Rosen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Traditional human-computer interaction (HCI) is based on 'cold' models of user cognition; that is, models of users as purely rational beings based on the information processing metaphor; however, an emerging perspective suggests that for the field of HCI to mature, its practitioners must adopt models of users that consider broader human needs and capabilities. Affective design is an umbrella term for research and practice being conducted in diverse domains, all with the common thread of integrating emotional aspects of use into the creation of information products. This thesis provides a review of the current state of the art in affective …

Special Section: Human-Computer Interaction Research In Management Information Systems, Ping Zhang, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Izak Benbasat

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

No abstract provided.

End User Preference Of Customisable Features Within A Course Management System, Diana Taylor

Theses : Honours

Customisation is the means by which people alter and change various elements of their environment with the purpose of making it more suited to their immediate needs. This aids in creating a more personalised experience. People are extremely diverse in terms of age, gender, nationality, and with the dominant presence of technology people also have various levels of computer skills and experience. In the context of computer environments, customisation provides the ability to cater for a diverse user group, providing tools and options that assist with specific tasks, improve accessibility and achieve greater user satisfaction. Carter, MacLean, Lovstard & Moran …

High Performance P300 Speller For Brain-Computer Interface, Cuntai Guan, Manoj Thulasidas, Jiankang Wu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

P300 speller is a communication tool with which one can input texts or commands to a computer by thought. The amplitude of the P300 evoked potential is inversely proportional to the probability of infrequent or task-related stimulus. In existing P300 spellers, rows and columns of a matrix are intensified successively and randomly, resulting in a stimulus frequency of 1/N (N is the number of rows or columns of the matrix). We propose a new paradigm to display each single character randomly and individually (therefore reducing the stimulus frequency to 1/(N*N)). On-line experiments showed that this new speller significantly improved the …

Structuring Home Video By Snippet Detection And Pattern Parsing, Zailiang Pan, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Hand-held camcorders have been popularly used in capturing and documenting daily lives. Nonetheless, searching for personal memories in home videos is still a laborious task. This paper describes novel approaches in detecting snippets and patterns in home videos for content indexing. To deal with the fact that most shots are long and with handshake artifacts, a motion analysis algorithm based on Kalman filter and finite state machine is proposed to decompose videos into tables of snippets. Each snippet is represented by a set of moving and static patterns. The moving patterns are automatically detected and tracked, while the static patterns …

Deformable Object Model Matching By Topological And Geometric Similarity, Kwok-Leung Tan, Rynson W. H. Lau, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we present a novel method for efficient 3D model comparison. The method is designed to match highly deformed models through capturing two types of information. First, we propose a feature point extraction algorithm, which is based on “Level Set Diagram”, to reliably capture the topological points of a general 3D model. These topological points represent the skeletal structure of the model. Second, we also capture both spatial and curvature information, which describes the global surface of a 3D model. This is different from traditional topological 3D matching methods that use only low-dimension local features. Our method can …

Indexing And Matching Of Polyphonic Songs For Query-By-Singing System, Tat-Wan Leung, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper investigates the issues in polyphonic popular song retrieval. The problems that we consider include singing voice extraction, melodic curve representation, and database indexing. Initially, polyphonic songs are decomposed into singing voices and instruments sounds in both time and frequency domains based on SVM and ICA. The extracted singing voices are represented as two melodic curves that model the statistical mean and neighborhood similarity of notes. To speed up the matching between songs and query, we further adopt proportional transportation distance to index the songs as vantage point trees. Encouraging results have been obtained through experiments.

Clip-Based Similarity Measure For Hierarchical Video Retrieval, Yuxin Peng, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper proposes a new approach and algorithm for the similarity measure of video clips. The similarity is mainly based on two bipartite graph matching algorithms: maximum matching (MM) and optimal matching (OM). MM is able to rapidly filter irrelevant video clips, while OM is capable of ranking the similarity of clips according to the visual and granularity factors. Based on MM and OM, a hierarchical video retrieval framework is constructed for the approximate matching of video clips. To allow the matching between a query and a long video, an online clip segmentation algorithm is also proposed to rapidly locate …

Recommender Systems Research: A Connection-Centric Survey, Saverio Perugini, Marcos André Gonçalves, Edward A. Fox

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Recommender systems attempt to reduce information overload and retain customers by selecting a subset of items from a universal set based on user preferences. While research in recommender systems grew out of information retrieval and filtering, the topic has steadily advanced into a legitimate and challenging research area of its own. Recommender systems have traditionally been studied from a content-based filtering vs. collaborative design perspective. Recommendations, however, are not delivered within a vacuum, but rather cast within an informal community of users and social context. Therefore, ultimately all recommender systems make connections among people and thus should be surveyed from …

Robust Classification Of Event-Related Potential For Brain-Computer Interface, Manoj Thulasidas

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

We report the implementation of a text input application (speller) based on the P300 event related potential. We obtain high accuracies by using an SVM classifier and a novel feature. These techniques enable us to maintain fast performance without sacrificing the accuracy, thus making the speller usable in an online mode. In order to further improve the usability, we perform various studies on the data with a view to minimizing the training time required. We present data collected from nine healthy subjects, along with the high accuracies (of the order of 95% or more) measured online. We show that the …

Gesture Tracking And Recognition For Lecture Video Editing, Feng Wang, Chong-Wah Ngo, Ting-Chuen Pong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper presents a gesture based driven approach for video editing. Given a lecture video, we adopt novel approaches to automatically detect and synchronize its content with electronic slides. The gestures in each synchronized topic (or shot) are then tracked and recognized continuously. By registering shots and slides and recovering their transformation, the regions where the gestures take place can be known. Based on the recognized gestures and their registered positions, the information in slides can be seamlessly extracted, not only to assist video editing, but also to enhance the quality of original lecture video.

Investigating Deception In Cyberspace, Holtjona Galanxhi, Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The use of anthropomorphic avatars provides Internet users the opportunity and freedom to present their desired identity. As cyberspace becomes a heaven for deceptive behavior, human-computer interaction research will need to be carried out to study and understand these deceptive behaviors. The objective of this research is to investigate the behavior of deceivers and truthtellers in the cyberspace environment and to examine how their intention to deceive may influence the choice of their avatars. The effect of using avatars to support communication will also be studied. This research provides insights on communication and trust issues in avatar environments.

Novel Seed Selection For Multiple Objects Detection And Tracking, Zailiang Pan, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper proposes a unified approach for initializing, detecting and tracking of multiple moving objects. Object initialization is achieved through novel seed selection which is adaptively activated, depending on the quality of tracking, to select the best possible frames along the temporal direction for object detection. EM algorithm is then employed to robustly segment and detect multiple objects in a selected frame. Each detected object is represented by an appearance-based model and mean shift tracking procedure is adopted to rapidly and effectively track the target objects.

Ica-Fx Features For Classification Of Singing Voice And Instrumental Sound, Tat-Wan Leung, Chong-Wah Ngo, Rynson W. H Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper describes a new approach in locating the segments of singing voice in pop musical songs. Initially, GLR distance measure is employed to temporally detect the boundaries of singing voices and instrumental sounds. ICAFX is then adopted to extract the independent components of acoustic features for SVM classification. Experimental results indicate that ICA-FX can improve the classification performance by significantly reducing the independent components that are not related to class label information.

Graph Based Image Matching, Hui Jiang, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Given two or more images, we can define different but related problems on pattern matching such as image registration, pattern detection and localization, and common pattern discovery. These problems have different levels of purpose and difficulties, as a result, often associate with different solutions. In this paper, we propose a novel approach to solve these problems under a unified framework based on graph matching. We first split the images into small blocks and represent each block as a node in a bipartite graph. A maximum weighted bipartite graph matching algorithm is then employed in an iterative way to find the …

Deformable Geometry Model Matching By Topological And Geometric Signatures, Kwok-Leung Tam, Rynson W.H. Law, Chong-Wah Ngo

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we present a novel method for efficient 3D model comparison. The method matches highly deformed models by comparing topological and geometric features. First, we propose “Bi-directional LSD analysis” to locate reliable topological points and rings. Second, based on these points and rings, a set of bounded regions are extracted as topological features. Third, for each bounded region, we capture additional spatial location, curvature and area distribution as geometric data. Fourth, to model the topological importance of each bounded region, we capture its effective area as weight. By using “Earth Mover Distance” as a distance measure between two …

High Accuracy Classification Of Eeg Signal, Wenjie Xu, Cuitai Guan, Chng Eng Siong, S. Ranganatha, Manoj Thulasidas, Jiankang Wu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Improving classification accuracy is a key issue to advancing brain computer interface (BCI) research from laboratory to real world applications. This article presents a high accuracy EEC signal classification method using single trial EEC signal to detect left and right finger movement. We apply an optimal temporal filter to remove irrelevant signal and subsequently extract key features from spatial patterns of EEG signal to perform classification. Specifically, the proposed method transforms the original EEG signal into a spatial pattern and applies the RBF feature selection method to generate robust feature. Classification is performed by the SVM and our experimental result …

Image Compression And Its Effect On Data, Khaled S. Alkharabsheh

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This thesis is intended to define and study different image compression techniques, software programs, image formats (from early ones such as “GIF” to most recent ones such as “JPEG 2000”), compression effect on compressed data (compressed images), and its effectiveness and usefulness in reducing the file size and its transmission time, as a result.

In many GeoBioPhysical applications, some information inside any image may be the keys to solve different kinds of problems and classify features. This kind of data and information has to be handled with care; i.e. it’s not allowed to be lost during the compression process. On …